>Gets killed by spalling
WW2 era tanks were shit. Some were less shit but all of them were literal deathtraps in one way or the other. Being on foot allows me at least be mobile and get to cover.
>Being on foot allows me at least be mobile and get to cover.
It allows you to die more easily because you aren't already in cover like the tank crew moron.
Again, we're talking about fricking world war 2 era tanks. Even if the shell didn't penetrate, it would create spalling and I'd be dead anyways. Oh, and I'm going to be equally fricked if I happen to be caught in an artillery barrage. On foot I can at least make it to a bunker that has a better chance of surviving that shit. These tanks were unreliable, big, relatively slow and loud. Good for infantry support, bad for crew survivability.
Casualty rates for dismounts was far higher than for crew
>muh spalling
Even with a succesful penetration and the mass of the shell added to the the number of fragments, you would expect at most 1-2 casualties
While spalling from non-penetrations was an occurence they were still preferable to getting caught in the open by artillery fragments
Some tigers took hundreds of hits without any deaths of their crew. Not every hit causes spalling and not allmetall spells equally.
Soviet metallurgy being shit caused huge spalling issues though.
this is a bullshit take. average number of dead crewmen per knocked out sherman was like 1-2 out of 5. plus if there are no replacement tanks you get plenty of time to put your feet up in the rear echelons. being a tanker and bailing out at the first sign of trouble was an excellent strategy to survive ww2
>slow >14mm armour >no gun traverse >engine behind your seat >can’t see shit
The tankettes were so useless that when Italy capitulated the Germans used what they captured in policing roles
>the chance to die as a tanker
as an AMERICAN tanker
The USSR used their tanks as disposable items and the Germans lost pretty much their entire tank arsenal in the war. Even if you survived a brush with death you're just gonna die next time.
too true. german soldiers used to call shermans "Oops! An unexpected error occurred while translating this text. Please try again later" because they would light up every time
>because they would light up every time
dry shermans brewed up between 60-80% of the time, wet shermans brewed up 15% of the time
this compared favorably with similiar range of burn out rates on panzer IVs, panthers, and T-34s
while the panzer IVs given rate was out of a sample of only 4 tanks making it too small to draw a conclusion, there was really nothing special in it that would imply abnormally good or bad flammability
soviets considered the M4A2 much harder to brew up than a T-34 due to the more stable propellant in the rounds, however
in any case, there is no reason to believe the germans thought the M4 was particularly unsafe when they called their own panzer IVs sardine cans owing to the thin armor
The pzIV was the objectively superior tank, more comfortable, more reliable and with more vision a better gun, better sights and a better chance to survive if ihit and/or burning.
Too inaccurate to bring to the front, too valuable to bring aswell, sorry comrade but you'll just have to charge the krauts till their run low on ammo before we send the party born to the front in our shiny new toys
They were more assault guns really, but there are records of them engaging Tiger's.
I imagine one hit to the side of the turret was enough to kill everyone inside the basket.
>over engineered
It wasn't over engineered, it just made zero sense in the context it was designed and built. If the US had engineered and built it, they'd have been fantastic
that would be pretty amazing if the 150 king tigers at the ardennes could have inflicted nearly 2000 M4 sherman losses, which would be account for half of all shermans the US lost in europe and triple the number of US tanks lost at the battle of the bulge to all causes
t34 because the nazis lost and at least after 5 kilometers i'd still be in the tank and not hoping i can get replacement parts so it can be repaired or refueled
The Soviets lost more T-34s than the total amount of tanks Germany lost of all types. It was an unreliable pile of shit, which was further aggravated by its subhuman crew.
The Soviets lost more T-34s than the total amount of tanks Germany lost of all types. It was an unreliable pile of shit, which was further aggravated by its subhuman crew.
ok? it was reliable enough to constantly frick up nazi tanks and roll into berlin, along with the "subhumans" that controlled it. for the soviets it was either victory or annihilation.
ok. well, if the panzer iv had such quality why didn't it help the nazis win the war? does quality really matter when you can't maintain that quality in order to achieve victory?
>80% casualties >negligible training >only command vehicles have radios
The IV, if only for the chance that you're deployed anywhere beside the Eastern Front
>shermans were made by USSR
They were Lend Lease gibs.
https://i.imgur.com/K5iJWnU.png
Panzer. The T-34 is a cramped deathtrap.
Neither would be preferable.
Even if the metallurgy of the plates wasn't suspect, the welds could be, spall-o-rama
https://i.imgur.com/EU967iZ.png
*lobs HE to the turret*
Enjoy becoming paste to due sheer power of concussion.
There's an account of a Tiger being concussed to death by Sherman 75 HE spam, with negligible functional damage otherwise.
>only built to house 5" malnourished vatnik manlets >constant spalling means you have a sub 20% survival rate in combat >non pens cause hull fractures due to heat treating being moronic >the factories that build them cut every possible corner to hit quota. Terrible welding, missing parts and horribly unreliable. One tank wasnt built with lights so they just hung an oil lantern on it. >gun barely penetrates german armour, assuming it even hits the target >christie suspension >fuel tanks in the fighting compartment mean a penetration will probably wipe the entire crew >no turret basket means the loader has to hope he doesnt trip on spent shells while turning >dogshit gearbox that constantly failed >most tanks didnt have a radio until late '44, only the commanders tank had one >frick all visibility leads to constant crashes >hilariously unrelaiable. Lost more to mechanical failure than they did to german guns. >of the 57,224 built in ww2 44,900 were lost (83% casualty rate)
Truly a war winning tank
T-34/85 is a better tank.
People are highly overrating the panzer IV in this thread.
Panzer IV was a 1936 shit box that was stretched to an inch of it's life, it was never designed to mount such a large gun and it actually had considerably less space in the turret than the T-34/85 did.
The T-34-85 had a 5 man turret with 50% more space for the loader.
Full electric turret traverse (late model Panzer IV did not!).
A superior gun.
Superior Armor protection.
A commander's cupola with 360° vision.
An independent high FOV periscope for the gunner that improved target acquisition time (panzer IV and most German tanks did not have this)
T-34s built after 1943/44 largely did not have serious QC problems that earlier T-34s.
By the T-34-85 almost all of the serious problems that plagued the T-34 had been resolved, both in design and build.
The panzer IV in 1944 meanwhile was overweight for the suspension from progressive up armoring, was being built by slave labour from sub-par quality steel, and had had all of the complicated components stripped out in an effort to reduce the build cost.
neither was
the panzer IV with schurzen couldnt be penetrated by 14.5mm anti-tank rifles on the front or side
T-34 had ~50mm side armor which was immune to their own 14.5mm anti-tank rifles
on the one hand theres a high chance my t34 gets blown up with me inside it, on the other hand I'll probably run out of fuel with the tiger and freeze to death trying to walk home. Also one side loses the war and gets punished with democracy and boomer economic growth while the other gets 45 years of communism as the victor.
So I guess I'll pack some mittens and take my chances in the tiger.
45mm hull @60 degrees is 90mm LOS. However in reality it counts for more than that as armour piercing shot tends to deflect away from the normal when penetrating a plate at an angle.
T-34-85 has 45mm at 60deg on the front hull, 40mm at 40deg on the sides, and roughly 90mm of curved armor on the turret front
so this gives LOS of 90mm on the front and 50mm on the sides, not accounting for thinned or thickened portions
panzer IV H has 80mm of vertical frontal armor, 50mm of vertical frontal armor, and 30mm of vertical side armor with schurzen that provides only marginal protection against shells but does stop AT rifles
in practical terms, the T-34 is not just tougher when faced head on, it can show off more of its sides before they become vulnerable
panzer IVs toughness is compromised by the thin turret face and how little wiggle room it has before the thin sides can be beaten even by small battalion-level AT assets
Pz IV, death is a preferable alternative to communism. No really, I would rather take my slim chance of a western front surrender over having to live in the USSR.
The M10 Achilles. Specifically, this one at La Roche, because I went there a lot in my childhood. Wouldn't want to pick a Tiger II despite the coolfactor, because you did not specify if I had to worry about maintenance.
The T-34-85 is widely regarded as the best tank of WW2. In one incident, an entire company of Tiger 2's attempted to destroy a lone advancing T-34-85 only to have all their rounds bounced by the T-34's superior angled armor. Said T-34 dispatched all the Tiger 2's with a single shot to their frontal armor that was constructed of pig iron. Wartime records indicate that the T-34-85 had a K/D ratio of 50,000,000:1. The single lost vehicle due to the crew drinking too much in celebrating their 1000th Tiger kill, and then driving their tank into a 20-feet deep river of Aryan blood. Fear of the T-34 was so great, that Germans would immediately surrender upon sight of them. The prisoners were then forced to lie down, and promptly run over by T-34's to avenge the 6 million israelites. Many historians contend that the Allies only won WW2 because of the T-34-85, and by extension, the T-34 series as a whole.
I'm sorry but how is the T34 real?
It looks like an oversized toy, like the turret would fall off the moment it starts moving.
No fricking way this thing was a crucial element against fricking Nazi Germany, I just don't believe it.
im 6'5"
not the t34
Neither the Panzer IV as well.
I'd rather be on foot they are both death traps
>random piece of shrapnel hits your artery
Even being in some Italian tankette was better than being on foot.
>Gets killed by spalling
WW2 era tanks were shit. Some were less shit but all of them were literal deathtraps in one way or the other. Being on foot allows me at least be mobile and get to cover.
>shell falls on you
nothing personnel
>Being on foot allows me at least be mobile and get to cover.
It allows you to die more easily because you aren't already in cover like the tank crew moron.
Again, we're talking about fricking world war 2 era tanks. Even if the shell didn't penetrate, it would create spalling and I'd be dead anyways. Oh, and I'm going to be equally fricked if I happen to be caught in an artillery barrage. On foot I can at least make it to a bunker that has a better chance of surviving that shit. These tanks were unreliable, big, relatively slow and loud. Good for infantry support, bad for crew survivability.
Casualty rates for dismounts was far higher than for crew
>muh spalling
Even with a succesful penetration and the mass of the shell added to the the number of fragments, you would expect at most 1-2 casualties
While spalling from non-penetrations was an occurence they were still preferable to getting caught in the open by artillery fragments
Some tigers took hundreds of hits without any deaths of their crew. Not every hit causes spalling and not allmetall spells equally.
Soviet metallurgy being shit caused huge spalling issues though.
The guys on foot are just auxiliary tank armor. You absorb the grenade so the tank doesn’t have to
this is a bullshit take. average number of dead crewmen per knocked out sherman was like 1-2 out of 5. plus if there are no replacement tanks you get plenty of time to put your feet up in the rear echelons. being a tanker and bailing out at the first sign of trouble was an excellent strategy to survive ww2
>slow
>14mm armour
>no gun traverse
>engine behind your seat
>can’t see shit
The tankettes were so useless that when Italy capitulated the Germans used what they captured in policing roles
while they might be deathtraps, the chance to die as a tanker in ww2 was extremely small compared to infantry
>, the chance to die as a tanker in ww2 was extremely small compared to infantry
statistically, german tanker were the secondwith low life expectancy, first one being U boat...
>the chance to die as a tanker
as an AMERICAN tanker
The USSR used their tanks as disposable items and the Germans lost pretty much their entire tank arsenal in the war. Even if you survived a brush with death you're just gonna die next time.
Neither of those is a Sherman though. The T-34 was the best tank of the war and the Tiger is a good 2nd or 3rd.
>T-34
>best tank
too true. german soldiers used to call shermans "Oops! An unexpected error occurred while translating this text. Please try again later" because they would light up every time
>because they would light up every time
dry shermans brewed up between 60-80% of the time, wet shermans brewed up 15% of the time
this compared favorably with similiar range of burn out rates on panzer IVs, panthers, and T-34s
while the panzer IVs given rate was out of a sample of only 4 tanks making it too small to draw a conclusion, there was really nothing special in it that would imply abnormally good or bad flammability
soviets considered the M4A2 much harder to brew up than a T-34 due to the more stable propellant in the rounds, however
in any case, there is no reason to believe the germans thought the M4 was particularly unsafe when they called their own panzer IVs sardine cans owing to the thin armor
Panzer 4
/thread
Yes.
I would rather be on west side of that front with the Americans and British
The pzIV was the objectively superior tank, more comfortable, more reliable and with more vision a better gun, better sights and a better chance to survive if ihit and/or burning.
TOG
Neither, /thread.
homosexual.
Surely, you meant "Ronson".
Tanks?
This overengineered rolling target
This
Sure its a massive resource drain and fairly insignificant in the war, but survival odds are top tier.
*lobs HE to the turret*
Enjoy becoming paste to due sheer power of concussion.
Too inaccurate to bring to the front, too valuable to bring aswell, sorry comrade but you'll just have to charge the krauts till their run low on ammo before we send the party born to the front in our shiny new toys
They were more assault guns really, but there are records of them engaging Tiger's.
I imagine one hit to the side of the turret was enough to kill everyone inside the basket.
>*misses tank sized targets 300m*
Kek
>over engineered
It wasn't over engineered, it just made zero sense in the context it was designed and built. If the US had engineered and built it, they'd have been fantastic
Didn't Americans eat those things up with their Shermans in Bastogne?
Tiger companies had a 13+ to 1 k/d, most of the lost tigers were due to needing to be abandoned.
that would be pretty amazing if the 150 king tigers at the ardennes could have inflicted nearly 2000 M4 sherman losses, which would be account for half of all shermans the US lost in europe and triple the number of US tanks lost at the battle of the bulge to all causes
t34 because the nazis lost and at least after 5 kilometers i'd still be in the tank and not hoping i can get replacement parts so it can be repaired or refueled
You are a midwit.
well i've sure been ownt, i guess. maybe if the nazis wanted to win they should have had better logistics. wehraboos are horribly cringeworthy.
You're confusing me calling you stupid for me being a wehraboo.
The Soviets lost more T-34s than the total amount of tanks Germany lost of all types. It was an unreliable pile of shit, which was further aggravated by its subhuman crew.
You know they made T-34s to last precisely one hour longer their their expected life span in combat which was 14 hours
that doesn't even make any sense.
ok? it was reliable enough to constantly frick up nazi tanks and roll into berlin, along with the "subhumans" that controlled it. for the soviets it was either victory or annihilation.
Quantity has nothing to do with quality, but you already know this, falseflagger-kun.
ok. well, if the panzer iv had such quality why didn't it help the nazis win the war? does quality really matter when you can't maintain that quality in order to achieve victory?
War is about economics and supply. That's why. German industrial output couldn't keep up.
>it was reliable enough to constantly frick up nazi tanks and roll into berlin
Then why did Soviet tankers prefer Shermans?
shermans were made by USSR
Terrible bait, no (you) for you
>80% casualties
>negligible training
>only command vehicles have radios
The IV, if only for the chance that you're deployed anywhere beside the Eastern Front
>shermans were made by USSR
They were Lend Lease gibs.
Even if the metallurgy of the plates wasn't suspect, the welds could be, spall-o-rama
There's an account of a Tiger being concussed to death by Sherman 75 HE spam, with negligible functional damage otherwise.
>only built to house 5" malnourished vatnik manlets
>constant spalling means you have a sub 20% survival rate in combat
>non pens cause hull fractures due to heat treating being moronic
>the factories that build them cut every possible corner to hit quota. Terrible welding, missing parts and horribly unreliable. One tank wasnt built with lights so they just hung an oil lantern on it.
>gun barely penetrates german armour, assuming it even hits the target
>christie suspension
>fuel tanks in the fighting compartment mean a penetration will probably wipe the entire crew
>no turret basket means the loader has to hope he doesnt trip on spent shells while turning
>dogshit gearbox that constantly failed
>most tanks didnt have a radio until late '44, only the commanders tank had one
>frick all visibility leads to constant crashes
>hilariously unrelaiable. Lost more to mechanical failure than they did to german guns.
>of the 57,224 built in ww2 44,900 were lost (83% casualty rate)
Truly a war winning tank
based getting raped by the prison gangs released from the gulags enjoyer
is that to scale? No way the t34 is that huge
Pz4 tank
if it was a sherman i'd pick it any day over the volkswagen 4 but the shartbox-34 is something i'd never pick. would rather be in an italian tankette.
T34 then i get free berlin pussy followed by a life time of miserable factory work
T-34/85 is a better tank.
People are highly overrating the panzer IV in this thread.
Panzer IV was a 1936 shit box that was stretched to an inch of it's life, it was never designed to mount such a large gun and it actually had considerably less space in the turret than the T-34/85 did.
This is bait right?
moron.
The T-34-85 had a 5 man turret with 50% more space for the loader.
Full electric turret traverse (late model Panzer IV did not!).
A superior gun.
Superior Armor protection.
A commander's cupola with 360° vision.
An independent high FOV periscope for the gunner that improved target acquisition time (panzer IV and most German tanks did not have this)
T-34s built after 1943/44 largely did not have serious QC problems that earlier T-34s.
By the T-34-85 almost all of the serious problems that plagued the T-34 had been resolved, both in design and build.
The panzer IV in 1944 meanwhile was overweight for the suspension from progressive up armoring, was being built by slave labour from sub-par quality steel, and had had all of the complicated components stripped out in an effort to reduce the build cost.
ill have to take the Panzer III Ausf.J
I choose the one that won the war
can't wait to see them in combat again!
Has that weeb ever seen a sickle before?
thats not a Sherman
Why aren't you posting a Sherman then?
Obviously the panzer
For all of its tactical and strategic effectovness, the t34 was hell to crew
Panzer. The T-34 is a cramped deathtrap.
Neither would be preferable.
Ill be driving in one of these beauties
>driving
That's the neat part, you don't.
The one that isn't susceptible to anti-tank rifles.
neither was
the panzer IV with schurzen couldnt be penetrated by 14.5mm anti-tank rifles on the front or side
T-34 had ~50mm side armor which was immune to their own 14.5mm anti-tank rifles
on the one hand theres a high chance my t34 gets blown up with me inside it, on the other hand I'll probably run out of fuel with the tiger and freeze to death trying to walk home. Also one side loses the war and gets punished with democracy and boomer economic growth while the other gets 45 years of communism as the victor.
So I guess I'll pack some mittens and take my chances in the tiger.
>tiger
unless this is some boomer humor about every german tank being a tiger, the other one is clearly a panzer IV
if youre talking about crew safety, then the T-34 has much better armor while the panzer IV is a little easier to bail out of
What is the line of sight thickness of a T34?
45mm hull @60 degrees is 90mm LOS. However in reality it counts for more than that as armour piercing shot tends to deflect away from the normal when penetrating a plate at an angle.
Pic is 17 pdr vs Tiger 2.
T-34-85 has 45mm at 60deg on the front hull, 40mm at 40deg on the sides, and roughly 90mm of curved armor on the turret front
so this gives LOS of 90mm on the front and 50mm on the sides, not accounting for thinned or thickened portions
panzer IV H has 80mm of vertical frontal armor, 50mm of vertical frontal armor, and 30mm of vertical side armor with schurzen that provides only marginal protection against shells but does stop AT rifles
in practical terms, the T-34 is not just tougher when faced head on, it can show off more of its sides before they become vulnerable
panzer IVs toughness is compromised by the thin turret face and how little wiggle room it has before the thin sides can be beaten even by small battalion-level AT assets
The German of course.
If you could own and operate any WW2 tank, without having to worry about any laws, which would you choose
Pz IV, death is a preferable alternative to communism. No really, I would rather take my slim chance of a western front surrender over having to live in the USSR.
The M10 Achilles. Specifically, this one at La Roche, because I went there a lot in my childhood. Wouldn't want to pick a Tiger II despite the coolfactor, because you did not specify if I had to worry about maintenance.
Hellcat. Vroom vroom.
uh oh the war thunder sherman babs have found the thread
Um, actually, I use the German Sherman 🙂
A bomber
>A bomber
>*misses*
The T-34-85 is widely regarded as the best tank of WW2. In one incident, an entire company of Tiger 2's attempted to destroy a lone advancing T-34-85 only to have all their rounds bounced by the T-34's superior angled armor. Said T-34 dispatched all the Tiger 2's with a single shot to their frontal armor that was constructed of pig iron. Wartime records indicate that the T-34-85 had a K/D ratio of 50,000,000:1. The single lost vehicle due to the crew drinking too much in celebrating their 1000th Tiger kill, and then driving their tank into a 20-feet deep river of Aryan blood. Fear of the T-34 was so great, that Germans would immediately surrender upon sight of them. The prisoners were then forced to lie down, and promptly run over by T-34's to avenge the 6 million israelites. Many historians contend that the Allies only won WW2 because of the T-34-85, and by extension, the T-34 series as a whole.
I'm sorry but how is the T34 real?
It looks like an oversized toy, like the turret would fall off the moment it starts moving.
No fricking way this thing was a crucial element against fricking Nazi Germany, I just don't believe it.